Relax, Recover and Rebalance With Natural Products That Work With Les and Brendan of Raw Botanics

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos, Tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper captains counting beans Contador cuentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy and coffee my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos el gordo the tacos standing puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean Watch the sunset la Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon hashtag SD TechOS with your host, Neil Bloom. Startups get the party Startups get the party started.

Welcome to the Talkers and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom and I am thrilled to have you here on the Talkers and Tech podcast. We interview builders of technologies, of companies, of communities and we do it weekly. So thanks for tuning in. Every Tuesday a new interview and on Fridays we talk about what's new in the San Diego tech ecosystem from a news perspective. So make sure you join us there as well too. We also have a tech newsletter that comes out every other week@freshbrewedtech.com you can subscribe to listen to it without further ado. Enjoy this episode. I am joined by the co founders of Raw Botanics, Les Collegian and Brendan Smith. Hey guys, thanks for being on the podcast.

Our pleasure. Looking forward to chatting.

Yeah, we're looking forward to getting to know the story a little bit. This is a budding industry that we're going to talk through. Do you want to give us a one minute overview? Les about Raw is Sure.

Well, Raw Botanic is a health and wellness company. We are focused on frankly creating impact for individuals based on certain needs and focused in with energy of rise, relaxation, rest and restoration. Our products have a combination of CBD and additional minor cannabinoids as well as functional mushrooms, adaptogens and custom terpene profiles. They're all natural, all organic, nothing synthetic. So we're really trying to make a difference in the industry with really a quality product that Makes a difference.

That's awesome. I want to we're going to dive deep into that a bit, talk a little bit about how I'm sure there's a lot of science and formulation that goes into it, but then also just the wellness aspect of people looking for alternatives these days and then the legal infrastructure that's allowing this to happen, which is great for new industries to spin up like this. But let's get to know a little bit of both of your backgrounds. Like how'd you. I can't imagine you were born and raised to build a CBD brand. So where'd you cut your teeth last originally?

Well, so I am a longtime entrepreneur and actually own an advertising agency called Jacob Tyler that was in business or has been in business for 22 years now. But it's always been very interesting me to me this space and I am a cancer survivor two times. So I have used these types of products in the past and found them to be very helpful for me specifically. And Brendan and I are actually longtime friends and I'll let him talk about himself. He's also an agency owner, but we're longtime friends. That said, hey, we think we can do something different and make a difference and actually have some fun doing it and just make a better product. We've noticed that the industry is rife with a lot of charlatans and people on the get rich quick and ride that train as quick as possible. And we believe that the cream will rise to the top and we'll make a product that's much better. So it's been a little bit of a learning experience for us. But we are not doing this as a get rich quick concept. We are really a slow and steady wins the race in the standpoint of the cream will rise to the top again on the right type of product for the right people at the right time and right place. It's right. It's very similar to a marketing strategy actually. But we just want to deliver on great products. And so we decided to start this company and really just try our best to make a difference.

That's great.

I love the obviously learning from personal need as you as the customer to a certain regard obviously and then scaling that to find to listening to lots of customers around that too. It sounds like both of you do that in your agency obviously, right? As marketers your ear to the ground listening to that. Bren, what's your kind of background with your agency as well too?

Yeah. So I'm the CEO and founder of Motive Interactive, which is a user Acquisition mark platform. And so we do user acquisition for large brands like a Disney or an Apple and been doing that for 20 years. So I've been an entrepreneur like Les for 20 plus years. So we've been through everything. I grew up on the east coast in New York and like Les, I had a traumatic experience. His was with cancer, mine was with a. A victim of a violent crime. So I was stabbed multiple times in the chest and the throat. And it kind of turned my world upside down for. For many years. And so severe ptsd. And that enabled me to become an amazing entrepreneur, I guess because I basically slept for three hours a night because, you know, with ptsd, slept with one eye open, one eye opened.

Sleep with you.

So when I relocated to San Diego for lifestyle reasons, got to an organization called EO and met Les and I think Les and I have a lot of things in common and one of them is that we understand brand. We have a passion for design and really a passion for integrity within a business and providing the best possible product and sparing no expense to do it. So finding a partner like that is an amazing and very difficult thing to do. So we partner on this project together and I think that we again have some things in some similarities, but we also complement each other and it's really a good partnership. So we're excited to launch this brand and I picked a great partner for it. So that's kind of our experience.

Love hearing that, especially partnership coming from meeting an eo also a member of and great to see that happen in San Diego. You both have used it sounds like products or turn to alternative wellness mechanism for unfortunate personal tragedies. Terrible on both regards. But have you professionally like worked in this industry? Is this something both of your agencies have seen just kind of a growth of as well and you and also helped you. It's not just about a brand that we have used for ourselves, but maybe there's a business out of this that we can do too.

Maybe to. Brendan, you know, I personally use products like this. I'm very passionate about natural wellness. I'm very passionate about things being as they're advertised. And so I see the opportunity with advertisers I work with constantly who, you know, these are big brands who always try to take the high road type thing. But this is digital advertising. So I've seen the gold rush in 10 other products. Right. I've seen it in providing leads for universities or other nutraceuticals, not cbd. And it seems like every time certainly in the natural foods and the health and wellness sector, it becomes a gold rush. And the first thing companies do is they kind of just try to find a way to get to market as quick as possible with probably the worst product for your body. And so I think that we learn from those like clients that we've had over the years. And I certainly have seen them good and bad. I think that I've probably seen a little bit more on the side from affiliate marketing with companies that I would say are just doing it the wrong way. So that played into this with getting into a partnership with Less and creating Raw Botanics is could we produce a product that is of high integrity, that works and that we can be proud of and it can be this amazing brand. Could we do that? It's very difficult to do because you're in an environment where it's the gold rush. Well, anyone's willing to do anything to get to the market. And so sometimes the guys taking that high road with integrity and with quality ingredients, they don't always win. Right? I mean you gotta fight tooth and nail. You really gotta. And you gotta spend a lot of money to get there because you're up against a very saturated market. So I think that's been my experience for myself.

I have worked with many health and wellness companies in large brands. Nuvasive, Novartis, big companies as well as smaller ones. I'd say that what I find is that similar to what Brendan just said is I can tell when people are here for that gold rush mentality in our initial conversations, when we are asking what their business goals and objectives are, the KPIs they want to meet and when they're completely unreasonable about those goals. So for example, we have a million dollar budget. We'd like to head 100 million in sales this year. So, okay, that tells me you just want to get rich quick and you don't want to spend a lot of money and you're probably out to help really anybody but yourself. We're in a fortunate position in my company now having been in business so long that we can turn that business down and so we can focus on the right types of clients for us. I have not done this in this space specifically, certainly not CBD or this type of direct to consumer product. What interests me more is it's something I'm learning about. And certainly we're not formulating these ourselves. We have doctors that are formulating this with scientists and we're doing clinical trials, stuff like that. That's making sure that we are staying on top with the best product. And to that point, even we had a. Our manufacturer that is handling the formulations. One of our products had come out and they had completed the formulation, and we realized they had a synthetic sugar in there, and we actually made them reformulate the entire batch. So that's how steadfast we are about it. And our products are. The quality you get is what you would expect for the price you're paying. And we feel we're delivering a high value at a high price, but that's not at a high price at a. At a decent price. Right. I've learned from the.

The.

The good clients and the people I've worked with on how to be patient and from those engagements do something that would work for us.

Great to hear in terms of just like, the background, the synergies from it. And I think a lot of our listeners also relate to having an idea. But everyone, like, just looks at the edge of the cliff and is like, when do we take the leap?

Right.

And so when is the right time to go all in on something like this? Love to hear a little bit of that, like, this idea. Obviously, you've used products, you thought you can do better. You've seen businesses pitch and say, we can do better. How'd you actually come up with this? That say, this is the right place in the market and this is the right formulation. And how did you find your doctors? Like, take us through the kind of the founding story of it.

Brenda, do you want to take that one?

Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, a direct answer to that is the best time to enter any market or any opportunity is yesterday. So I think that the reality is that we looked at a market that was certainly crowded, but we saw this window where we feel that especially in the hemp industry, things are going to shift as people get more educated on what the actual product ingredients are, they're going to demand more from the companies selling these products. So we felt that window was now. And so did we spend a lot of time working up business plans. If you compared us to a lot of other people, probably not. Yes, we did create a business plan. We did put a lot of thought into how we were going to enter the market. But I would say that more than that, we did kind of jump in. And that window, we feel, is open for maybe a year or whatever it is before other brands start catching on and realize that they can't just put their label on a bottle that's not good enough anymore. And one of the things Les had kind of mentioned, pricing, but the this is a market where you can go and buy gummies, right? Cbd, Gummy at a gas station. Right. So that, that's not our market, that's not our, our customer. And yeah, you can pay 12 bucks maybe, I don't know, for something at a gas station. This is something that not only is it not going to benefit you, but you know, it's probably going to do harm. Right. There's something loaded with sugar and artificial sweeteners and I mean, if they're rainbow colored gummies, you can probably assume, and they're sold out in Barstow and a gas station, it's probably not great. So I think that looking at the space being that crowded with that type of product, we felt like it was a good time and opportunity to get into it in terms of sourcing out doctors and scientists and labs and the farm to get everything. That was a painful process. I mean, we called hundreds of product manufacturing companies before we got down to a partnership. And we're really looking for partners that have the same mission that we have. So this is high quality sustainability, if possible, or when possible, integrity. We need to be able. Les and I were on the phone with manufacturers in Colorado. First thing we said is, hey, can we come out and see your facilities? You know, it's a good sniff test, right? There's a billion people in Colorado who are going to sell you on this, this opportunity to produce your product. And we really interviewed these doctors and these manufacturers and made sure we had the right one. And we, when we came up with the formula for what we were going to do, this, these pillars of rise, Relax, Rest and restore and the adaptogenic mushrooms that we were going to put in and the plants and the botanicals, all that were going to work together. We were told that it wouldn't work by a number of manufacturers. It would either be, it wouldn't taste right or it would be too hard to get it into a tincture. Forget it. You can't get it into a soft gel because it has turmeric in it. And that will die the machines and no one's going to do it. We heard a lot of that. So none of this has been easy. And we certainly have been told no a thousand times, but Les and I have been told no a million times.

A hundred thousand. Yeah, exactly.

So, you know, like, you know, I can tell you as two entrepreneurs, when you tell us something's difficult, when you say things like no, all that does is put a spark under us. And we're like, let's go and so we ended up with a great manufacturer that's in San Diego and of course we talked to manufacturers in Canada, all.

Over the US all over.

We ended up. Our farming is, is done in Kentucky. So this is sun grown hemp that's on a sustainable farm. Our mushrooms come from a family run farm in upstate New York. And these are mushrooms that are grown in a woodland environment and hand picked. So this is very different. These are fruit body extract mushrooms. So this is the complete health benefit of a mushroom. Where most products you would take today from a supplement standpoint, those mushrooms would be created in a lab and they would be very little if any fruit body. They would be filler and a lot of junk. So that's. Those are the two main partnerships. That's upstate New York and Kentucky.

That's really cool. It's. And the fact you kind of went and saw the ingredients too in the farming like that direct sourcing is. It kind of comes through on your brand and your website as well too. It's just that you're not just taking any off the shelf kind of ingredients there like you, you mentioned before, the, the gas station CBD to all the way kind of the high end area. There's maybe a CBD for everyone, maybe. But you know, a specific to the people that are looking for this kind of solution. Like what are you seeing that people are using this for? What are some specific use cases?

I want to say that I do agree with you Neil, that there probably is a CBD for everyone and, and that is, you know, we don't judge and you can purchase whatever you'd like. I'd say what we're trying to do is to educate consumers that there's options that are perhaps better that you may not have thought of or that you don't quite understand the simple example and based on your question right now is one of our better selling products is our rest line and we have a tincture and a soft gel. Both contain CBN as well as cbd. CBN has a sedative effect and that is our replacement instead of using melatonin. So to the point of the gas station CBD analogy, it could be in a cvs, it doesn't really matter. And these are fine. I shop at cvs, that's no problem. It's that if I'm going to want a sleep aid that has melatonin, I should really just spend $5 and get melatonin because that's really all you're paying for and the ingredients in that specific package. So we don't Melatonin is not good for you. It's synthetic. And for me specifically, I get really horrible dreams and I wake up groggy. I wake up groggy with Advil PM too. And if you take a lot of Advil, it's not good for your liver. You don't maybe want to get on an Ambien kick and then you're, then you're tied to prescription drugs. So for us, CBN is a natural solution that we actually complement with a Reishi mushroom and which also has sedative effects. So our feedback, over 92% of our customers say they have a more restful sleep using that product. But again, everybody is different so you never know. But we get fantastic results from that and it's an all natural product. So, you know, those are the types of things that we're doing, I think differently. That will become a new way of being in the industry for the stronger companies.

Yeah. And if I could just chime in real quick on the cbn, is that the way to really look at these products is that CBN specifically, as Les said, is sedative. Right. So this is going to help you relax, it's going to help you have a better night's sleep. But what you really see, the results is in your deep sleep. So if you're the type of person who uses a sleep tracker or you know, like an aura ring or something like that, what you're going to see is that your deep sleep, if you're a bad sleeper, your deep sleep might be like 20 minutes or something. It could be less, it could be five minutes of deep sleep. If you're taking CBN, if you're taking our rest product, you're going to see a tremendous jump in that, right? You're going to see an hour to two hours of deep sleep and you're going to see that no matter what the other conditions are, right? So when you're preparing for a good night's sleep you want to have, you really should set the mood. You should not look at your device. There's a lot of things you should be doing, right? Maybe not drinking alcohol, definitely not having sugar. But not all of us follow that, right? We all have too much alcohol, right before you go to sleep, we have a little sugar. I had a piece of chocolate. And the way CBN works is it's going to affect, it's going to help that deep sleep no matter what. And a lot of other products won't do that. And when I say deep sleep, there's stages of sleep. Deep sleep is the stage where your body and your mind start to recover. And this is the lack of deep sleep is linked to Alzheimer's. It's linked to severe mental decline, physical decline, weight gain. So that's the most important stage of sleep. And so you can get eight hours of sleep and you could have two minutes of deep sleep. And so when you. This product really cures that. I mean, it really takes care of that issue. The other thing it does is if you ever took a sleep pill or even maybe melatonin, and you woke up in the middle of the night, you can't get back to sleep. Right. So the science behind melatonin, and I wouldn't advise anyone take melatonin, certainly not over 1 milligram. But the science behind melatonin is it just tricks your mind into letting you know it's time to go to sleep so that if you do wake up in the middle of the night, you're up, it's going to actually have a negative effect on your sleep. But if you take cbn, you can get up like I do. I had little kids and my kids would wake me up in the middle of the night. Well, I take cbn. It's amazing. I can just go right back to bed and I wake up the next morning feeling completely rejuvenated and feeling great. So it's a very different type of sleep aid than you would get from a melatonin or a Tylenol PM where you're feeling that grogginess. It's a much healthier natural sleep rhythm that you.

I love that background, especially with all of us becoming more kind of quantified self. Right. I sleep with a Fitbit and just wear a Fitbit all times and can actually measure it, which is pretty nice to be able to quantify that in an industry that you said. There's lots of brands that are just putting a. Slapping a sticker on something saying, this is good for you. You can, you guys are actually showing you can prove it.

We actually do have proof of that on our blog. We have someone who did the tracking and, and shared both the deep sleep. So it's interesting.

We'll link that in the show notes for sure.

Yeah. And I haven't stopped. And I wear an aura ring every night and I biohack and I actually experiment with our product. You know, I'll take our product on a night that I've had a cocktail late. I'll do that on purpose. It's a great little way to test and I'll see how it affects my sleep with our product or without our product. So. Right. I'm one little case study. But I'm constantly looking at how our products affect our bodies and. And I'm into kind of tracking my sleep and all that stuff so I can geek out on it a lot.

Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of us are for sure. You mentioned the rest line. It sounds like you have a few other lines so kind of take us where you are. It sounds like you're live. Your people are buying direct from the website. Or are you in any stores as well too? Or take us through kind of where you are today.

We're live on the website. We are just getting into the retail world. We do have a partner in San Diego currently selling product and actually just ordered more, which is a good sign. And they're called Saffron and Sage. And so that's going quite well and we're obviously looking to expand. The company was launched last June. So we're really making sure again this is. Goes to our understanding of business, I guess and having done this is that we're really trying to just do it right and make sure the foundation is so solid before we jump into huge retail outlets or anything in that capacity. But the other lines of product, and I always think Brendan does a better job of explaining this than I do, but we do have. Each focus has a minor cannabinoid included as well as a. A custom terpene profile and the functional mushroom adaptogens to support the goal of what you're trying to do. So like for example, with restoration for our restore product we have CBG immunity purposes, bone growth, anti anxiety. So there's all kinds great benefits that each product has and some overlap which is fine, there's no issues there. But we're really trying to build them so that we try to focus on what we're trying to accomplish.

Yeah.

With the background of San Diego, we're I think we're a bit more wellness plus Wellness Forward kind of community. Right. So may maybe we're early adopters to this kind of product. Does that also lead to the kind of businesses here? Are you seeing a bunch of CBD businesses based here that I don't know other they either share notes or feel competitive to.

You know, that's a great question and I can tell you yes, as a member of the entrepreneurs organization in San Diego, there are two or three companies that are technically competitors as they're selling similar products, but they're not really going after the same market. And for example, their products do have melatonin or other ingredients that we may not use. But the nice thing about that organization is we all have a friendly approach and atmosphere to just do better. And so as we were building the company, we consulted with those guys, you know, and said, hey, any thoughts on how to do this better? Or any thoughts on where you ran into struggle and, you know, what experience shares can you give us that might prevent us from doing the same thing? Or manufacturers we should absolutely stay away from? You know, and so that's always been truly valuable, and that's a really great thing about that organization, as you know, so we use that. But I do think that there are a lot of brands in town that are doing this, but there frankly are a lot of really great national brands that are doing this.

And there are also brands that we.

Really respect in this space. So we're learning as we go as well, but again, only just trying to deliver the best product. Brendan, I don't know if you have anything additional to that.

You know, I did want to say that when it comes to San Diego, you do find brands that are interested in sustainability. You see that? So we work with a brand called Surf Dirt, which we're really excited about. And this is a. An entrepreneur, female entrepreneur, who created a sunblock, and we've partnered with her to create our sunblock. And this is a sunblock that is reef safe, that is healthy for the environment, it's sustainable, and it's also healthy for your body. Right. So there's so many toxins that go into sunblock. And we, you know, Les had met this young lady, and we both were enamored in her energy and what she was doing with this brand and her values. And her values. So we look at this company and it happens to be in San Diego, and we say, how can we work together? And we have the same values, we have the same mission. So I think that San Diego has probably more of that than any other place, you know, that I've been in markets, and that's great. Yeah, yeah.

And we're always, by the way, for anyone who's listening, we're always looking for that, but we're always looking for those relationships of similar minds, similar values, great products. So if we can create those partnerships and again, do better, why not?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I think we're a very collaborative entrepreneurial community. You see that first. But also just a rising tide lifts all boats. So this is obviously an industry that it's still risky for some people. Right. Some people look at it and say, you know, I'm not ready to try those kinds of products. So the better we can educate everyone. By all companies having success, it probably is good for you as well too. So I think that's also a good point.

Education is absolutely critical, and you're 100% right.

Yeah. Well, speaking of San Diego, we also have a pretty great taco scene, and so the listeners got to know. Do you guys have a favorite taco spot? Maybe more than one.

I can go first on this one. My favorite taco spot goes down to when I first moved here from the East Coast. I'm also from the east coast, and someone said, you should get a fish taco. And I said, are you insane? Like, that is the grossest thing I've ever heard. How would someone eat a fish taco? And went down to Ocean Beach, a place called south beach, and had what to me was the best taco I've ever had in my life? And so anytime I can get down to Obi to South Beach, I'll go grab fish tacos. And I love it.

It's a great one. How about you, Brennan?

This is a loaded question because there's so many good ones, and I'd probably take heat for saying what I'm about to say, but I also like the fish taco, so I'm like. I'm a fish taco guy. I got to tell you, the Brigantine in Del Mar does an outstanding fish taco, and I don't mind the scene there, so I think that, like, that's a decent place. But really, if I'm gonna. If I have to go on record as the best place, I would say yes. Since I'm on record, I gotta say. I gotta say Los Olas, because Las Olas, I. I surf right in front of that place. They do a good margarita. It's a good vibe. I got kids, they can just run around, and I don't always get the fish taco, but they do a good fish taco, good shrimp taco. I don't know. Las Olas, that's. They make. They have good T shirts. Yeah.

Let's talk another 30 minutes about tacos. Let's go.

Let's do it.

Look, there is no wrong answer here, that's for sure. And there is a right taco for the right time of day, for sure. So, no, I don't think we've actually had Brigantine mentioned, but it is a good spot. So it is being added to our taco database that we have for the tacos and tech podcast. So thank you, guys, and hopefully we can share a taco at some point in that area as well too. But thanks so much for sharing your story. Really appreciate it.

Our pleasure. Thank you for having us.

Absolutely. We're looking forward to continuing to watch. And I'm gonna go try some products, go order some and use some sleep aids. And thanks again for being on the podcast.

All right, Thanks a lot, Neil.

Thank you, man.

Thanks. Thanks for tuning in to Tacos and Tech podcasts. You can find all of our episodes on freshbrewedtech.com as well as on Twitter at Tacos and Tech Pod. Also follow freshgreentech and of course, all of your social platforms and make sure to share and give a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Google Play. Thanks again.

Startups get the party Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it.

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Startups get the party Startups get the party started. Startups get the party Startups get the party started. Startups get the party Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it.

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